This section is intended to provide a background or context to the invention recited in the claims. The description herein may include concepts that could be pursued, but are not necessarily ones that have been previously conceived or pursued. Therefore, unless otherwise indicated herein, what is described in this section is not prior art to the description and claims in this application and is not admitted to be prior art by inclusion in this section.
Boron-comprising layers are useful in many applications such as dopants in semiconductor devices, shielding, neutron detection and absorber in nuclear reactors, neutron capture therapy in cancer treatments, stabilizing transparent conductors (TCO) for display devices, boronated fiber glass, boron-containing neodymium magnets (i.e. Nd2Fe14B) and superconducting material (i.e. MgB2), and components in 2D boron nitride and hard boron carbide ceramics. Specific to semiconductors, miniaturizations of microelectronic and MEMS devices have created the need for conformal, uniform coatings of boron-containing layers grown on 3D structures. For example, silicon-based photomultipliers (SiPMTs) and micro-channel plate (MCP) detectors integrated with boron-comprising layers may be used in neutron sensor devices when the boron-comprising layer is enriched with 10B isotopes.
Conventionally, boron-containing layers such as B2O3 and pure boron have suffered from (1) instabilities due to high hydroscopic character (i.e. retention of water molecules from the surrounding environment), as in the case of B2O3, or (2) high capital and energy resources (i.e. high temperature, infrared (IR) heating or plasma sources) required to deposit and maintain the boron-containing layers.
A need exists for improved technology, including a method of fabricating boron-containing layers using atomic layer deposition.